How to speak fake Russian

Ok, this comes from a person who claims he can speak Russian ... little do they know, but ...

The best way to speak fake Russian is to know a few usefull Russian words. I recommend "durak", "nyet", "chevo?" and of course "ty porosyenok". Mix and match these words for added bonus.

Be very articulate. Move your hands around and sometimes attempt to hit the person you're talking to on the shoulder. That is considered a sign of affection. Honest.

Practice your best fake-Russian accent. Watch early Arnold Schwarzenegger movies where he tries his best at Russian. Those movies are truly priceless.

Be creative. If the person you're talking to actually can speak Russian, then do your best to persuade them you're from a different region of Russia, and that you're the only one who actually speaks Russian correctly. Use phrases like "Grrr", "Nyu Nyu" and fake losing interest in the conversation.

For truly excellent results, don't excessively yell at the person you're talking to. Some yelling is permitted, but don't overdo it. You'd be better off that way.

The writeup above is quite accurate at describing fake Russian speech, but it lacks a couple of points that are quite curtail
for truly realistic Russian.

If you are willing to swear heavily in your fake Russian speech, you will have no problem sounding so believable that even true Russians may be fooled. The reason to this is quite simple: although modern Russian swearing is not very complex, it allows the speaker to say just about anything he desires without even coming near mentioning a clean word. This means that if you learn ten basic Russian swear words, you would be able to speak on the level of your average Moscow teenager. I am not going to describe the Russian swearing in detail here (I could, but it doesn't feel right filling E2 with such terrible profanity), find another source to learn it if you wish.

So you want to speak fake and clean Russian. You would have to know a couple of words, and the ones above are an excellent
start except for the last one which would not do you much good as it is a very rare insult that is hard to pronounce and
doesn't even sound all that Russian. Make sure you use "chevo?" as much as possible. It is translated to "What?", so it's
applicable in any situation, it sounds very Russian, it's easy to remember and is used a bit too much by many Russians. Don't
use the classic "da" and "nyet" too much because these would be the first words that come to mind when thinking of Russian:
you don't want to make it too obvious. The Russian phrases node is an excellent collection.

Now, of course you can't compose an entire conversation of these words. You would have to make up your own words: and this is
where the real art comes in. Your average Russian word can start with just about any letter, but to sound more Russian you
would want to start from the harder letters. "R", "K", "G" (you may wish to replace all your hard G's with H's for dialect
used in different parts of the Soviet Union, but make sure you are consistent if you do this), "V" and "T" would be good
choices. Don't start you words with letters like "W", "U", "I", "E" etc. Other letters could work, but these are the best
ones to sound most believable. Now, make sure that the letter "R" appears in your words as much as possible (see note about
accent.) Ending all your words with "ski", "ov" and "off" may sound tempting, and it's a good idea to a certain limit but
don't overdo it. Russian words can end in many different ways as long as it doesn't sound overly American or British.

Now the most important part - the accent. You can say just about anything you want but if you get the accent wrong you might
as well just give up right there. With a good accent, you can speak any language and make it sound Russian. So how does the
accent work? Most important of all are the R's. Getting it to sound perfect may be difficult (to be honest, I am still not
able to get the correct pronunciation) but you need to aim it in the right direction. Your worst mistake would be using the
American or British R. They are as far from Russian as possible. The Russian R is very hard, and always sounds like a couple
of English R's placed together. Repeat after me "R", "Rr", "Rrrrrrrr". No, not like that, more Russian! Try to sound angry.
If it helps, think of a Scottish accent, they are quite similar for this purpose. There. That's better. But try to make it
harder next time. Once you get something similar to the Russian R, you would want to use it as much as possible and make it
stand out. When saying your fictional (or non fictional) word, it's fine to make the R last a bit longer than the rest of the letters. The
next letter that's really important but is often overlooked is "L". A hard L is difficult to describe, but the basic idea is that
you put your teeth together and make an L sound without using your tongue at all (and you keep your lips slightly open). Try it, I am pretty certain you can't go
wrong. Since you can't make up too many words, just spend more time on each one when pronouncing it. It actually makes it
sound more Russian. Pick a part of the word and stretch it (that part would usually be an A or O).

Cha0s briefly mentioned hand movement, and this indeed is a very important part of your fake Russian. If you move your hands
around a lot (Russians do that) some attention would be lifted off your mistakes and transferred to your hands, which you
should be waving ferociously as though you are a crazy old Russian rocket scientist explaining his new theory to a class that
can hardly understand him (this involves shaking both hands, waving them forward and making faces that indicate your shock at
the stupidity of the person you are talking to).

The next part applies to imitating any language: you want to invent a fictional topic to your conversation, so that the mood
changes would be correct. You can't just randomly change your attitude and hand motions; you have to change them according to a certain pattern if you want to look
believable. Imagine you know what you are talking about, and it's the other person who is too stupid to understand.

I totally agree with the part about yelling. Russians do it, but if you try you are certain to overdo it. Just avoid yelling
altogether, you would sound angry enough if you follow the above instructions.